CROSSING OVER: Patricia Barber says that Joni Mitchell
was a model for her new Verse.

PATRICIA BARBER,
whose new Verse (Blue Note) came out last month and who'll play the Regattabar
next weekend,September 19 and 20, also has ideas about covering pop tunes.
The singer, songwriter, and pianist has a knack for offbeat choices: Sonny
Bono's "The Beat Goes On," Bill Withers's "Use Me,"
Peter Green's "Black Magic Woman." What's surprising is that
she can turn these pieces into real jazz, even if her ideas about how
to do it come off as more blunt than Gershon's. "My opinion is that
it has to come in the arrangement," she explains over the phone from
her home in Chicago. "You have to smarten up the pop song somehow.
If you don't do that, it's a complete failure." And as vehicles for
jazz, she adds, "most pop songs do not have enough harmonic complexity
to work."

For a lot of
her fans, Barber is the jazz vocalist of the moment - not only for her
arrangements of pop but for her incisive piano playing and her witty,
original songwriting and vocal phrasing. Verse is all originals, full
of her typical urbane allusions (Zeus and David Hockney get name-checked).
The page doesn't do justice to " 'Guilt' like garlic/Needs to sauté
with cream, butter, and wine" (from the new "I Could Eat Your
Words") - you have to hear it delivered in her cool-bronze alto.
But there's hardly any Barber piano playing. "In general, I kept
piano out of it. It was a Joni Mitchell-esque recording, and I wanted
it to sound more guitar-intensive."

Mitchell has
become a touchstone for female jazz vocalists hoping to cross over to
pop (see Cassandra Wilson and Norah Jones). "Above all the pop
artists, she's the one that I find interesting. Her lyrics are interesting.
I learned a lot about how to cram lyrics into a small space from her.
Her instrumentation is pretty interesting - it's not as interesting
as having jazz musicians really stretch out, but for pop it's pretty
interesting. And I love her voice, love the way she sings, and she's
prolific. So if I could do anything close to that, that's definitely
what I'd be trying to do."

But Barber's
goal is still jazz - "lyrics that work with songs that jazz musicians
can play over." And her songs have as much to do with jazzheads
like Dave Frishberg and Mose Allison as with Mitchell. Also on the new
album is trumpeter Dave Douglas, who's worked with her in the past,
and whom she calls "the most interesting jazz-trumpet player on
the planet right now." She envisioned him in writing the tunes:
"He can stay right near the heart of the song harmonically, and
yet he can step outside."